Iceland Legends

The Icelandic Sagas; were from the Norse people of the Nordic Island nation. They had a great deal of folklore that was passed down through the generations, for a thousand years.

The sagas of Iceland, were stories, legends, mythology and history of the Norsemen. Some of the people in the tales came from real leaders of the Viking age.

       Raven Floki, was a Norse explorer. In the 860s, he sailed to from Norway to Iceland. The legend says that a raven helped the Norseman find the land mass. Odin, the king of the Norse gods, used the raven as the bird messenger. Floki led the settling of Iceland, in the late ninth century.

       Icelanders began recording the sagas about four hundred years later, after the first Norsemen came to the new Nordic country.

       The Tale of Ragnar and his sons were written in the Legendary Sagas.  They were part history and part legends from early Norse and their Vikings. The sagas were first documented in the language of Old Norse.

       The Vinland Sagas: were the accounts of their explorations to North America.
Leif Erikson first sailed to Newfoundland, Canada, in the eleventh century.

      

       In Iceland; they have the legend of Lagarfljot, a giant serpent in the lake. Sightings of the creature go back some 600 years. There was a video of the riverworm taken in 2012. It showed a huge, snake like creature, slithering through the water.

 

       The Norse had folklore about werewolves:

       Varulfur, was half man, half wolf, like a werewolf.

A warrior wearing a wolf’s fur, was called Ulfheonar.

A Berserker, was a Norseman in a bear coat. They fought in a frenzy,  with extreme aggression. This is where the expression, ‘Gone Berserk’, comes from.  Berserkers were said to have eaten plants that produced power and energy in the worriers, so they would be more ferocious in battle. Some of the substance they consumed was henbane, which intoxicated them. Or they may have ate some mushrooms that produced hallucinations.

       The Nordic people had tales of giants, demons, or  jotnar. In some poems, troll woman could transform themselves into wolves.

       Tales of wolfmen come from many of the Icelandic sagas, from the medieval era. They were shapeshifters in war and battles of Old Norse lore. And some of the legends may have come from Celtic origins.

       From Hrolfs saga kraka, in the 1300s, the spirit leaves the body and becomes an animal.

In King Haraldr Saga, berserkers fight allied with ulfheonar.

From the Volsunga saga, in the 1200s, the son of the king is called a Ylingr, which is a wolfling, or wolf cub. There is a shewolf that eats some brothers in the story.

Also from the thirteenth century, Egil’s saga tells of the “Evening wolf”. The members of the family were banished from Norway and then went to Iceland. One of them was a transformer, with great strength and fought like a berserker.

In Tiodels saga; around the 17th century, a shapeshifter transforms into a vargur, which is a wolf, or changes into a bear and lives in the forest.

Today, there are no longer any wolves in Iceland. But they did live there twelve centuries ago, when the Norsemen first came to the Nordic island nation.

       

       In Icelandic lore; there are tales like the Deacon of the river, from the nineteenth century. Just before Christmas, a minister hit his head and drowned in the river Horga, which leads into a long fjord. His lady friend from the farm where he had lived, saw the deacon after the tragedy, with a hat and scarf over his injured head, which he obtained during the accident. The apparition spoke in poetic prose.

There are many Christmas time horror stories on the Nordic island. Like the Norse giantess, witch and cannibal called Gryla, who cooks and eats children. There are also legends about trolls and a very large carnivorous cat, to scare boys and girls and get them to behave during the holidays.  

Sources:

Wikipedia.org; Sagas of Islanders,

Floki, Norse colonization of North America,

Berserker, Varulfur, Hrolfs saga kraka, Egil’s Saga,

Djakninn a Myrka, Iceland Christmas folklore.

Youtube; Gryla: The Cannibal Witch of Iceland.

Document; The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature; from the University of Iceland.

Writerscafe.org; thanks to John the Baptist, for information about berserkers and the plants they ate.

Author's Note

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

Quite interesting material here. I was not familiar with much of it, but I have heard of the Berserkers. One thing I read was that they discovered a plant that was a natural amphetamine, and that by chewing this plant they tapped into a powerful energy that made them extremely formidable in battle. Are you familiar with this information?

[Novram]

No, I had not heard of that. Is the plant henbane? or mushrooms? Thanks for the info and the review.

[Novram]

I added the plant information to the article.
Drug induced hallucinations experienced by berserkers, would be part of metaphysics, but not supernatural. While werewolves are supernatural, but would not be included in the metaphysical.
However they do relate to each other in Norselore.
Thanks John.

[Novram]

I also like to write about The Norse people, (commonly called Vikings). Although the Norsemen are not themselves paranormal, they are an enigma of history.

[Dave Brown]

All very interesting
I'd heard of the Berserkers but surprised about there being no wolves there now
Something else we have managed to eliminate
Funny enough, many moons ago, I did a thingy about a young boy raised by wolves.
All good stuff

[Novram]

Thank you Dave. Do you have an article about the boy raised by wolves? I would be interested in reading that.

[Dave Brown]

Up upon the Arctic swell
Where polar bears don’t wish you well
Where igloos are formed of ice
And living there demands a price

A tyke on a kayak fishing trip
When rough waters made him slip
Then hit a wave, fell overboard
While his family onward oared

Too late they saw him gone
But luck brought a seal along
That carried him to a far shore
There left alone, this child of four

Cold and crying on his back
Was found there by a wild wolf pack
To their den in the great unknown
To raise him as their very own

He learned to fish and to hunt
While just a little scrawny runt
Soon ran freely with the pack
Hunting game he’d learned to track

He fought the grizzly bear and won
Tamed the foxes, every one
On bare feet as tougher shoes
Caught the Cariboo in twos

In his self-made beaver coat
He out-climbed the mountain goat
And was as mean as any wolverine
That the Arctic had ever seen

His hunting skills became legend
To lead the pack, he was destined
When on the day the alpha male
Became too old and too frail

And it came that fateful day
When that great beast down to stay
And the boy raised in the wild
Now fulfilled his role as nature’s child

The stories told round campfire haunts
Told tall tales of the wolf-man’s jaunts
Of where in weather of sixty below
He hunted through the arctic snow

The pack he led did rarely appear
Scarcely glimpsed by mountaineer
Till one day a sweet child was lost
In the Arctic chill and frost

She had wandered lost, to mountainside
The wolfpack heard, as she cried
The wolfman took her in his arms
Carried her softly toward lowland farms

The legend tells of his great size
And of the gentle in his eyes
And of the small child in his arm
That he had returned safe and warm

When they returned to their tract
The legend continued of the wolfman’s pack
And to all those living there around
The pack’s land became hallowed ground

[Novram]

Thats a good poem and story. Who wrote it?

[Dave Brown]

my little effort